Morpheus

From afar it might be mistaken for average feathers, however, if you take a closer look, you can feel without even touching it the thousands threads of its delicate texture and the subtle shimmer of his wings; by the time the rising sunbeams could strike it, they are far gone. He is now back to humanity.

Every morning he opens his eyelids and stares at the fresh air of a new day. He squeezes them tight and flaps them again wishing it all had been reality; the night lingers.

He moves slowly but his brain is running in the speed of light. He’s ready.

For decades, he’s been giving birth to his Gods and Demons translated into little synchronized letters, swimming into words, paragraphs, chapters, entire tales. His mind processes what he feels into melodies, which flow into one another. His synapses proliferate millions of musical notes; he is overflowed with desire, it’s contagious. He walks out of his bed and covers his palpable outline with conventional pieces of clothes. The delicate blur of light that surrounds his edges is as golden as his bouncy hair curls. He opens the giant wooden door leading to the outside world and climbs onto his magic rug bewitched into a sky-blue scooter. He rides his wills through the asphalted streets of the busy city, opening seas. He watches the architecture of the massive buildings. He sees the rainbow in the millions of cars that, as cattle, crowd the paved trails of that urban jungle. He takes notices of the mass of people living their lives inside their thin bubbles. He travels in his magic-rug-scooter taking curbs by storm, riding through the throng, full of colossal ideas inside the little bag on his back. He conquers his Kingdom through the tiny slits of his eye against the wind, gulping images into information.

Every day he engages his audience chanting the ordinary into magic. He attends meetings with suited man and casually dressed fellows, he visits well decorated offices, he has lunch and dinner meetings in distinctive restaurants, he’s invited to homes and requested by several different tribes; he’s a breeder of dreams. He spreads his seeds full of great ambitions. He rides around Olympus shooting arrows of creativity into people’s minds; ideas that blossom into intricate projects, raising millions of their device of trade, which will later generate unexpected stimulation into several individuals brains, in a full circle of inspiration.

During daylight he may look human to distracted eyes, but he transcends humanity in his abilities; he’s a man filled with elaborated affections. Once the sun starts setting, he feels the wings slowly ripping his pulsing skin. The air gets thinner. His new branches get lighter by the darker the sky turns. His feet begin to disregard the boundaries of gravity; soon is time to go. His mind now plays a complex symphonic orchestra breaking all his shells open. His heart pounds fresh blood and suddenly pour hiccups of intensity out of his chest. His wings are fully-grown; time has come. The music gets clearer and louder; he starts to fly.

He opens his wings taking upon the night by his arms and travels through clandestine space tunnels. His long voyage feels barely like a couple of seconds. He disregards Time by the joy of tasting the soundless gust of the journey. He knows to slow down once the air warms up; he’s entering her land.

She sleeps soundlessly, tacitly waiting for his arrival. He lands in her room mesmerized by her fragility; little patinho. He stares for a while, photographing from far each of her corners into mind portraits. Her little butterfly wings are still frail from growing. He quietly gets underneath her sheets and sluggishly spoons her margins. Her body boils. She embraces him in silence. He caresses her cheeks with his eyelashes and kisses her nose with the tip of his. Their skins have a flawless memory of each other. She turns to him and sees through his eyes; finally into each other’s arms. They kiss and stay there for a while, just being. They squeeze tightly, blissfully. He lies on top of the full length of her body and she takes pleasure in supporting his weight. They duck dive into each other’s smell, puzzling their limbs into one another, like complex enzymes; they fit. They morph their borders into one singular unit. Their sweat balances each other’s temperatures. They are in heat.

He bites her inner tights in a feast; she kisses every tiny piece of his body and sucks his peripheries; he eats figs off her legs and licks her pink tongue. They pour naughty wishes into wetness, losing their walls into each other’s secrets. They explore their territories with endless curiosity. Their bodies dance in perfect sync, brewing hurricane, exploding in thousand sparkles turn into a firestorm of planetary magnitude. They overflow all of their fluids and finally faint into each other’s arms. They fall into the deepest dream. Love meets Soul.

He opens his eyelids and stares at the fresh air of a new day. He squeezes them tight and flaps them again, wishing it all had been reality; the night lingers.

Two Pairs of Feet

One day, while in the midst of living two parallel worlds and completely unaware of the importance of that specific day, two bodies were put in the same country, same city, same room. Two bodies that had been individually walking through space, light, sound, time, without ever knowing about each other’s existence. They were born in far apart cultures, separated by thousands of miles and only united by sharing the same planet at the same time. Bodies which paths had been built by tiny grains of sand turn into solid ground designing the trail to their destinies, and could have never foretold their throbbing fate.

Over the years, each in their own castles disconnectedly had their little feet walking on thick sand and wet grass and harsh cement and warm mud and soft snow and dry dirt-roads on remote sides of the same living system. Feet that ran their winding courses climbing the stones of time whilst turning it into fuel to their lymph; feet that blossomed into a whole body of singularity and its lungs learned to breath a complex web-net of particles that were somehow stranged neighbors rubbing each other’s walls by default. They experienced the world through the massive abyss in their tiny pupils. Pupils that swam in a pool of sterling green iris on his fair face, whereas in brown white waters within her eyes; eyes that swallow image, morphing it into knowledge, which could had never come close to touching the unbearable concept of each other’s possibilities as two, foremost as one.

They were once two idiosyncratic rivers that after running through several canyons and rocks and caves and waterfalls, would unexpectedly merge into an intricate sea, changing all its tides, just as if the full moon were permanently above.

Through decades, they had learned separately how to love and fight and persist and cry, they had learned how to relate and how to disregard, how to detach and how to engage. They had puzzled together their own little pieces into complex live structures. They were to themselves fulfilled and whole and that’s when after years of preparation, without warning, they finally clashed into each other’s shores.

They looked at each other that first moment and, from that split second on, they somehow knew their lives would never be intact anymore. The impact of the collision of their two worlds flooded into songs and poetry and movies and love letters and infinite tears of joy and intensity. They were two galaxies that when finally coexisting together had the potential to brew an entire new universe.

The stars had aligned. It was now up to them to choreograph their own planetary system.

The Thumb

It was one of those days that I couldn’t care less; no fru-fru to go to work. As usual, I had set the alarm for ten minutes prior to the time I had to be turning my car engine on, 5am. All I needed was to brush my teeth and shove some clothes into my limbs and torso and go. No brushing hair, no shower, no choosing outfit, no “read-the-news” morning crap.

I knew it was a music video, which already set me on that panic mode of “anything can go” kind of day. The fact that it was a stage job brought me some kind of peace of mind, knowing we wouldn't be moving from location to location, either have to handle the melting sun outside.

So I arrive to the stage, and as usual, immediately smile with the sea of men that I get to work with everyday. I mean, it’s a very an passant thought that I don’t even notice I’m thinking; It’s just a note into my morning.

The day starts hectic as usual. Everyone is talking about the big-shot Director of Photography we were working with. Okay, Okay, his work is pretty amazing…extremely sexy without being vulgar. It’s mostly about women; lighting them and finding their perfect angles, which he does every time. He has awards and awards and massive major accounts. He is tall and skinny, which is not exactly my type when it comes down to it; he’s gray-haired and probably around his fifties; he flirts with everything, even the couches and chairs. The man is powerful and intimidating but still able to be soft and personal. He's all over the place in his funny and sweet manner, charming the whole set with his skills.

He’s been coming my way, closer and closer every time, making comments and asking things. I don’t get flattered; it seems to me he does it to everyone. I’m not feeling him at all. Then he starts the staring thing. I know he’s constantly staring shamelessly at my face, and yes, sometimes I catch him looking at my “outline” in general, not to be too specific. Honestly, I was just trying to get by, how many of those hotshot guys we encounter every day with no qualms?

Lunchtime arrives and I go sit at a table with the Grips. I see him coming my way and I pray not to be interviewed right in front of the guys, but I knew it, he seats right in front of me non-chalant and starts the questionnaire. The guys are loving it; they couldn’t be better entertained watching his matting techniques and my escaping answers. I respond everything forcing my eyes not to look into his - just monosyllabic and reserved - oh God…so the opposite of me.

He comes closer by the end of the lunch and I can smell him. Okay, that’s when it became a problem. His smell immediately brought new feelings into the picture.It SX a nerve. How can that be? It’s so strange this chemistry thing. Out of nowhere, I felt him. He suddenly became intriguing to me.

I started to watch him being: he’s loud but gentle at the same time. He knows how to dress really well in a very simple way; perfect dark jeans that fits him to a tailor-quality, white linen button-shirt opened just enough, nice work black boots and a silver chain with at little coin dangling on his chest; He looks carelessly good. The haircut also helps; you can tell he cuts at John Frieda or something like that…who cares…it looks perfectly messy.

He is good. He knows what he wants and he has a vision. The crew is impressed. Grips and electricians are all compliments, which is very unlikely. The hot dancers are all over him, trying their best to get his attention; the director acts like his assistant, letting him make the decisions…I mean, the whole set was rocking his cradle and still, his attention was on me, every spare second he has… interesting. At that point I start to let my mind wander and wonder. I'm no longer the little sheep. My perversions are suddenly triggered and I can’t be too close to him anymore. Fuck, he distracts the shit out of me. I don’t let anyone notice. I focus on my tasks and make myself as busy as I can. The day is almost over, I’ll be okay. I’ll soon be in my car and he’ll be just a funny memory. It’s okay, it’s okay. Just walk away.

It’s a wrap. Everyone is loading their equipment into their trucks and he’s saying bye to everyone.

I hide. I go into the office, the restroom, anywhere I can be to not run into him. I had just come from one marriage, one major relationship and one engagement in a five-year span and all I wanted was some peace of mind. I’m extremely attracted to that old man, but I just didn’t want to go down the same path one more time.

Eventually, I come out of my hiding place knowing I was safe. There was no way he was still there after so long. I say bye to everyone and start heading to my car relieved.

There he is in the parking lot, taking his time doing I don’t know what…He comes with open warms and a massive smile. He hugs me tight, as if we were friends for a long time, and tells me we must get together for drinks or something. He loves the Brazilian culture and he assures me we have a lot in common – if men only knew how many times a Brazilian girl in US hears that everyday.

I try to talk to myself to not fall for it; I battle my brain while he writes his information down. I eventually hesitantly surrender. I do. I give him my info.

It was about five minutes into my drive home when I get the first text. I like it. I thought it was sweet and thoughtful. I love men that are Man enough to not play that silly phone game.

We start an intense routine of e-mails, text messages, calls the whole week. We communicate thorough the entire day; from the first good morning call until the last good night. It’s exciting. He’s just how I like: into me! And that only makes me more into him. I was flattered by the non-stop attention he was giving me, regardless how crazy busy he had been.

“Okay, lets see each other”, I finally agree.

We decide on lunch. We stop by his house first, which I firmly believe it was one of those “impress-her” moves. Lets not even talk about his car, which was totally “I-can-fuck-any-bimbo-in-town” car. Well, we get to his house and it’s just magical. It’s rustic, perfectly built and stunningly decorated. I’m falling head over heels for his taste in furniture, pictures, smell, placement of every object…I mean, in everything. I can even say that his place perfectly fits and portraits my personality to a level that I haven’t experienced, and I like to think I’ve seen many gorgeous houses.

He starts showing me his art, which was already all over the walls and it seemed one more of his “impress-me” moves. Let me tell you, my friend, it was working. He answers the phone and speaks French with someone… Come oooon, did he plan everything out before? Did he ask a friend to call him just so he could expose his French skills? I was getting overwhelmed; it was just so fucking perfect. I was there dipped in infatuation and he knew it. I had a tendency to believe that he planned it thoroughly.

We finally get out of his love-guru temple and head out to lunch. It was a flawless sunny day. I had chosen a subtle see-through summer dress and heels to play with his photographer skills. It works; he’s all about the nuances of the light on my skin and dress, it flows… I mean, the dress. We have the perfect food, even though we are so entertained talking that both of us had suddenly lost our appetites. We leave the plates full and decide to watch a movie somewhere. We go back to his place to look into movie times. We are looking at his computer screen together and our scents mingle. We get closer and closer quietly, until our cheeks touch. We smile and turn into each other. We kiss.

A little paragraph here: I must say, I was dreading the kiss. I feared a terrible sloppy or tough or shy or cold or pointy or dry or just wrong kiss. I was dreading kissing him as much as I dread kissing any foreigner. To their credit, I was lucky to find a couple of amazing kissers in the crowd, and yes I haven’t had a chance to kiss that many to compare, but being Brazilian you know, my peeps may be anything but bad lovers.

Well, back to my good-taste man. We kissed and kissed and kissed more, we both felt like ripping each other's clothes apart but we stopped ourselves and headed out to the movie theater, full of anticipation and excitement. Shit, I could already tell our chemistry and compatibility were insane. We were so comfortable and natural and at ease with each other.

We get out of the car and hold each other’s hands without thinking. We kiss and hug and laugh while walking to the movie theater, which was kind of odd to me, but okay. We feel like we’ve always known each other. He picked the last row of the theater. It’s packed. Not one available seat and that fat crowd eating their popcorns and flipping their lit cell-phones don’t bother me at all. I’m content. The trailers happen while we lose each other in our kiss forgetting everyone else.

Lights go off and his hand immediately run up my legs. I’m already wet by that time. Honestly, I got wet the moment our faces got close looking at the computer screen. His hand seems pretty determined: it goes slowly into my panties and starts caressing me on top of it. I’m in a mix of extreme excitement and embarrassment…I mean, is anyone seeing this? It seems everyone is distracted by the movie. We are clear. His fingers persist. They play and play until he pulls my panties to the side. He reached flesh, wet flesh. He pulls his finger out and licks it. He smiles at me and kisses me even more passionately.

Fuck, he’s a pervert…just like me. “I’m loving it”. I was happy and excited and anticipating more, but thinking that was enough for the time being. I was done and ready for the movie. He wasn’t. Here it comes his finger again. Okay, okay, I can handle it. It seems he’s getting a lot out of it, so let him be. He now comes with his thumb and digs right in. Wow, calm down, nice and slow…I can’t really say much, it’s not like we are alone in a room. I suddenly feel aware about the trial we go through when we are meeting someone. I was learning him, and the fact that that thought suddenly popped into my mind showed me that he suddenly felt foreign to me. He seemed to feel very strong about that thumb-fingering act since he did it for what it felt like a long time, but I’m not sure how long. I eventually forgot any excitement and was just weird out about it. When I was on the verge of getting bothered he stopped.

The rest of the movie was a mix of feelings inside my little self. Don’t ask me about the storyline but about the girth of that finger. It all felt a bit bizarre, but maybe he was just horny, which could be good. Choose a perspective, right?

We go back to his place and make out for a bit and there it comes the thumb again. Oh man, is it a fixation or what? He’s an amazing kisser and he feels good and he smells good and he’s really charming and intelligent. He has a lot going on for him but that thumb is getting under my skin, not literally, well, also literally...

Things get heated up. We stop. We both know we don’t want to be just one more for each other. We both subtly see our disposing capability and we’re both grown up enough to understand the magic of anticipation. I go home.

We text message a bunch more and send pictures back and forth that same night. I have mixed feelings, but he’s still running strong through my trial. Truth is, I liked everything about him; I was just a bit intrigued by that thumb thing.

We see each other the next day and the moment I walked into his place here it comes. The over excited thumb gets right back between my legs on the first kiss. Oh, man… come on. He stops. We talk a bit, he shows me more stuff, we start making out by the kitchen table and it feels good and we keep going and it feels even better and we keep going more and oops…suddenly he is inside me, and I don’t mean the finger. I’m a bit overwhelmed to say the least. It was too soon and too sudden. It feels good but I wasn’t prepared for it yet. I’m half into it and half having that gut feeling that turns everything into doubt.

He throws me around the house and fucks me in every corner of it, in what somehow has a Movie feeling to me. Is he choosing frames? I’m obviously going through way too more thoughts that I’d like to in a first-time-making-love encounter. As I said, we were fucking, at least he was. I couldn’t commit to that randomness. It all felt weird and he cummed without me truly caring. That was telling. Very.

We go to lunch or dinner or I don’t know. It’s all a blur to me now, since all I could handle was trying to grasp my own feelings toward that man. I remember that I cut our date short saying that I had an early call or something. I went home very confused and not knowing what to do of all those feelings. It had nothing to do with “what he’s going to think about me?” stupid thing; it has never had. Truth was, I was just starting to blossom so many good feelings about him, about us, and that sudden act kind of took away the magic. He texted me and emailed and called, but I don’t remember how my responses were; I did respond it though, every one of them.

I went a couple of days avoiding seeing him, but I still had feelings for him. I missed him and I liked him somehow, but my gut was telling me something I couldn’t gather yet.

Saturday came and he had planned a full day together…did we do it? Well, I think we partially did. I remember getting to his place and going through the thumb routine once again, which was really getting to my nerves but still somehow, bearable. Then, going to lunch and to the Amoeba Store, where we bought each other a couple of gifts. We decided to head back to his place to watch a 1960’s era movie, I’m not sure which one. I do remember the feeling I had the whole time: I was in eerie, attracted and repelled by him at the same time. We knew each other’s love and life stories by then, I knew about his daughter and ex-wife, he knew about my ex-husband and life in Brazil; we knew each other’s schedules and favorite places, we knew our similarities more than incompatibilities. He was talking about future plans and I was adapting to it. We were engaging and I didn’t want to make impulsive decisions, I mean, more than I had already done.

We get back to his place and head to his room to watch the movie. I start to put together all the little bits. He’s controlling. He’s always trying to place me in a certain spot, just like he envisions, and fuck me in a certain position, which feels a bit mindless to me. We are about to get to bed to watch the movie. He asks me to sit instead of lying down. I pretend I didn’t understand and I lay down as I wished in first place. He lies next to me complaining and kissing me at the same time. I’m weird out. I start wondering why was I putting myself through that confusion. That’s when it finally hits me: I AM NOT COMFORTABLE!

I stop kissing him, agitated by my realization and I start to think about what I want to do. How strong is my certainty? Am I completely unable to turn the discomfort through talk? Am I ready to close this chapter and move on or do I still have feelings for him? Am I through with him? How should I handle the situation? And that’s when the enemy heads my way. That chubby fucking thumb comes like a thunder devastating my secrets. It comes with no sorrow, eager to be inside me. I freeze. I’m so stunned by the complexity of my feelings that I can’t react. That thumb stays cold inside me. It moves in twirls and in rough side to side moves. Even the worst gynecologist had never made me feel that invaded. It intrudes my insides carelessly, as I was a blow-up doll. It lingers like thorns on my walls. Does he think it feels good? I’m completely motionless and mute. I’m dry, completely dry. I’m a statue and he doesn’t seem to realize it. That thumb feels so foreign to me. My core is tightened, I have a knot in my gut that squeezes my bowels out of my mouth. He doesn't stop. I want to throw up. I felt like I was being raped by a thumb. I close my eyes begging to be done and it suddenly is. he stopped.

I barely breathe in relief, when he comes to kiss me like nothing happened. I jump out of bed with astuteness, and stare at him blankly. He looks at me in eerie. “What happened?” he asks. He couldn’t tell my uneasiness at all? It all clears in my mind. The whole problem was that I didn’t want to impose my ways from the beginning. I wanted to unveil his fetishes and perversions without telling him what felt right or wrong to me. I didn’t want to impose walls, but just to see what he was into and check if I was too, letting myself shine through my windows freely little by little. But you know what? It didn’t even worth explaining. I was done.

I made up the lamest excuse and dressed in less than 30 seconds, while already going down the stairs. He ran after me seeming perplexed. He stopped me before I was about to slam the door after me. I didn’t want to show him my true feelings anymore. He held me tight by the door and kissed me. He asked about the DGA screening we were to watch the next day and I said I had to check on some stuff. He claimed we had already planned it for a long time and I had to make up to him from my crazy exit. I said “yes, yes, sure.” and left without looking back.

I got into my car and cried. I cried for not hearing my gut. Cried for exposing myself to those feelings. I cried for being too young to understand to meet first and engage later, and with that every nutty sex act may be welcome. However, without intimacy is just dirty and empty somehow.

I didn’t show up for the DGA thing the next day; I didn’t answer my phone and I actually left my place so he couldn’t find me. I got a couple of sad and disappointed messages but no angry ones, which relieved me. I was going to vanish for good but I couldn’t walk away like that. I called him a couple of days later saying that “it’s not you it’s me bullshit” and he got it right away. It didn’t worth explaining.

Weirdly enough, we still email here and there, but he’s to me The Prince turn into Frog. I could excuse myself saying that it was all because of that fat intruding thumb that has no idea how to ring a bell, but truly it was about comprehending that maybe intimacy should come prior to sex.

Lesson learned.